Just keep smiling 💋

Excalibur, Treasure Island and the Palazzo

The Exalibur, directly south of NY-NY looks just like a Lego castle, in fact take that picture and add the Lego logo in the corner, you wouldn’t be surprised to see it on the toy shop shelves. It is grand, but not like the Bellagio, it’s fun and playful and probably the hotel most kids would pick just for the decor; turrets, battlements, suits of armour and chandeliers, it’s quite Disney. Near the South end of the Strip it’s only got the Luxor and Mandalay Bay between it and that famous Vegas sign. But you can get a free monorail from Excalibur that will take you to either one and from Mandalay Bay you can walk to the sign in about 20 minutes. A hotel with a busy but relaxed atmosphere, defiantly family friendly and perfect for your childish side that always wanted to live in a castle.

Treasure Island on the other hand is on the North East part of the Strip, opposite the Palazzo and Mirage with THAT volcano. Opened in the boom year of development in 1993 it is actually the second smallest of the 10 hotels we visited, with 2,884 rooms- only 60 more rooms than NY-NY. But it does not feel small. At night it feels like the heart of the Strip as all the surrounding hotels are very close to each other and gives the impression of a Disney resort, one hotel merges into the next. Your eyes will be overloaded with things to see!

And then there are those pirate ships…ok so they don’t rise out of the water anymore but are still pretty impressive! Again…go at night, the lights are just amazing.

Now if you are thinking, “oh but how can I pick one hotel when I want to stay in all of them?”, the Palazzo is your answer. Right next to the Venetian, so you’ve got those gondallers right outside, and there are a lot of similarities between the Bellagio and the Palazzo (sound the same, look the same, same sign, same entrance, same grandeur…I could go on). Want the shops and the architecture of Caesar’s Palace, not a problem, Grand Canal shops won’t disappoint.

But with that said, the hotel does seem to lack some identity….you can never try to be like someone and do it as well as they can (like if someone tried to remake Harry Potter, they would have the benefit of hindsight, but it would never be as good as the original). Maybe it was someone’s idea to take all the best bits from each of the surrounding hotels and amalgamate them in a new hotel as the Palazzo is the most recent builds, not opening until 2007.

Saying that, it’s still totally awesome and would blow any British hotel out of the water…